One Year on: the DA will keep fighting for the Youth Wage Subsidy
Note to editors: This is an extract of a speech delivered by Helen Zille in Orange Farm today
Exactly one year ago today, thousands of young Democratic Alliance activists marched on COSATU House in downtown Johannesburg to protest against COSATU's blocking of the Youth Wage Subsidy.
We marched peacefully, intending to hand over a memorandum to COSATU's leadership detailing why the Youth Wage Subsidy would help to open the doors of the economy to unemployed young South Africans. But COSATU met our peaceful march with violence, throwing stones and injuring many.
COSATU thought that they would scare us away and break our resolve. They could not have been more wrong. Their actions on 15 May 2012 proved to all South Africans that the DA stands in solidarity with the unemployed - the millions of ordinary men and women who are looking for a fair chance to build a better life for themselves and their families.
Unemployed South Africans now know that only the DA fights in their corner. Where we govern, we are creating the right conditions for a growing economy that attracts investment and jobs. We are implementing the Youth Wage Subsidy as best we can with the resources we have in the Western Cape, and it is benefitting thousands of young South Africans who could not get jobs before.
Next year the DA wants to win in Gauteng. Let me tell all young people in Orange Farm and elsewhere in Gauteng this - if the DA wins in Gauteng next year, we will bring the Youth Wage Subsidy here too. It will be one of the first things we do.
Today I visited young unemployed South Africans in Orange Farm. They told me how they feel locked out of the economy and that they have lost hope of finding a job anytime soon. They told me that it feels as though the system works against them; that they feel excluded and disenfranchised.
And they're right. By bowing to the narrow interests of COSATU and refusing to implement the Youth Wage Subsidy, this government excludes young people from the economy. It cuts the youth off from opportunity.
The DA has always fought for a more inclusive economy, and we always will.
During apartheid we opposed the racist job reservation laws. These laws reserved certain kinds of jobs for white people only, locking the majority of workers out of the economy.
We opposed job reservation laws at every turn, and we exposed them as unjust and cruel. This brought us into constant conflict with those who controlled the levers of economic power at the time, the apartheid government.
But we did not flinch. Helen Suzman, our lone member of parliament all through the 1960s, always argued for an inclusive economy that would open opportunities to all South Africans.
Our political opponents would have you believe that the DA only governs for the benefit of white people. They tell you that the DA supported, or even governed, during apartheid. These lies have been so often repeated, that many people actually believe them to be true.
That is why we are running the Know Your DA campaign around South Africa. We want every South African to know that we have always fought for an Open Opportunity Society for All, and we carry on fighting for it now.
Having a job is the most important way of achieving a better life. It is the only real pathway out of poverty and towards prosperity.
But in South Africa there are millions of people that cannot get a job, and so they cannot even take the first step on the pathway out of poverty. That is not the freedom that we fought for, suffered for, and even died for. That is not real freedom.
Today we meet again, one year on, to remind young South Africans that COSATU is still keeping them unemployed, that it is keeping them locked out of the economy and denying them the dream of a better future.
The fact is that if the Youth Wage subsidy was implemented when it was first announced in President Zuma's 2010 State of the Nation speech, 440 387 young South Africans would have already benefited from it by now.
That would mean 440 000 more young South Africans with renewed hope of a better future.
Even though the Wage Subsidy was announced again in this year's Budget Speech, albeit under a different name, it is still no closer to being implemented than it was in 2010.
COSATU has been using its political clout in the ANC government to block the implementation of the Youth Wage Subsidy for three years now.
COSATU's leadership says that it knows the plight of the unemployed, yet it is happy to undermine the futures and aspirations of those same people. Every year Zwelinzima Vavi stands up and says that youth unemployment is a "ticking time bomb" that is about to explode. He did so again last week. But every year he blocks the one policy proposal that can really help to defuse the bomb.
Instead, COSATU-aligned Ministers like Ebrahim Patel have announced a half-baked alternative Youth Employment Accord, which makes no mention of the Wage Subsidy and which contradicts the National Development Plan.
COSATU does not care about the unemployed, nor does it share the DA's vision of a prosperous South Africa with opportunities for everyone.
The Youth Wage Subsidy is the only policy on the table that would create real new jobs for young people.
In the open, opportunity society envisaged by the DA, the Youth Wage Subsidy will serve as a crucial rung in the ladder to a prosperous society for all.
Only the DA is fighting for an inclusive economy where no one is locked out or left behind, where everyone has a chance to get a job and build a better life. We've always fought for this, and we will always will.
Issued by the DA, May 15 2013
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
